#XEMU

[posthumanwanderings]

so it’s been 2 years since I’ve messed with XBOX OG emulation, and so far there’s some minor improvements with XEMU (Gunvalkrie now doesn’t do that screen glitching thing it would do every time you dash, some games that wouldn’t boot up at all now boot) but it’s still running at half speed and Jet Set Radio Future still has this annoying sound click issue every time you start to move or land... haven’t messed with CXBX yet but I’m hoping for the best. I did however test Halo which of course is the only game working at 90% compatibility lol, prob cause that’s what the developers were more focused on. so if it comes down to it the only XSTREAM I’ll do this year will be that until those emulators improve... I’ll eventually get a new CPU but I really don’t think that’s the issue this time.

[spaceflight-insider]

Spacesuit prototype revealed for Artemis 3 Moon landing

Axiom Space reveals prototype spacesuit for the #Artemis 3 Moon landing mission. #AxEMU

Axiom Space revealed a prototype of the Moon spacesuit it plans to provide NASA during the Artemis 3 mission — the first mission to the lunar surface since 1972. Credit: Axiom Space When NASA astronauts return to the surface of the Moon in the next several years, they’ll be using a spacesuit built by Axiom Space. (more…) “”

[superjacobworld]

The players want brightness slider with obscenely dramatic extremes

video games always give you the most boring postprocess options. anti-aliasing and gamma correction and various performance settings, maybe a vignette if you're lucky. let players adjust the vibrancy… color-grade with custom LUTs… let them slap on some obscene sharpen if they want. bloom slider that goes to 500%

[simantopia]

literally how it fucking feels trying to install debug cheats on the PS2 emulator vs the Xbox emulator. Like CHRIST, why is it so HARD and COMPLICATED for the xbox one ?????

[gemstarb]

Watch "Secret Scientology - Xemu Full Lecture - L. Ron Hubbard - October 3, 1968" on YouTube

What the actual Fuck? Dude had to be on something. This feels like some kind of comedy show. This crap was before I was born. Drug induced Fruit Loop!

[cherryautomata]

Xemu Xeno Alien Baby Display Lamp - Reconditioned with custom liquid

[strangledwires]

This is Urbz on the PlayStation 2 compared to its Xbox counterpart. The one with the red tint is PlayStation 2, the one with the blue tint is Xbox. (I added which is which in each image description!) And nope! I did not edit the colors at all, they truly have different hued tints!

I already posted a comparison before, but I deleted it since I didn't have my PlayStation 2 emulator set to HD graphics, but I did have my Xbox set to them. So, I felt it was a very unfair comparison as PCSX2 with basic settings looked a lot more pixelated. So, I deleted that post, and now I'm reposting the comparison with fair images!

Despite them both being HD, the Xbox version reigns superior. Xbox still has more defined details & textures, it's a lot clearer, the lighting is better (compare Neo in the bg of his shop in the Xbox version vs the PlayStation 2 version) and there are details I've never noticed before (such as Crispin's pants having stripes! It is unseeable in the PlayStation 2 version)

I find it interesting that the lighting is different, too. The red tint fits the industrial aesthetics better, but personally I think the blue tint fits the Foundry's depressing moods more.

Screenshots were taken with both PCSX2 and Xemu emulators.

[boringblogxtreme]

Boring Blog Episode 2

Hello ladies and gentlemen. So this unexciting blog continues my never ending waffling about computers that no-one really gives a flying fuck about.

So as I mentioned last issue. I bought a new Dell Inspiron 3525 laptop before Christmas. I ran Linux on it for two weeks and then I returned it to windows 11 which its where it is currently.

A friend asked me was I annoyed at Windows yet and to be honest I really don’t have any major issues. Do I miss Linux well lets just admit I can’t say I miss at all.

So what nonsense have I been messing with. Well as the Macintosh 128k was 40 I was going to do something Mac based. So I could have downloaded Basilisk II/Sheepshaver but nope. Mini Vmac would be appropriate given the Mac in question, once again no.

I was playing with VirtualBox trying to get it to run Mac OS 12.0 (Monterey) I was following various guides and after 5 hours of playing about I still couldn’t get it beyond the EFI boot kept failing.

I had tried many different fixes and it really wasn’t working. I then moved to VMWare Player. Originally I went to version 15 but upon changing the vmx file to apply the fix it crashed the player and refused to let it go on.

I found WMware Player could be updated to version 17 which I did and the fix allowed the installer to work. It then took forever to install. Then I let it upgrade to 12.7.3 which took another 2 hours.

This was a project I intended to be an hour ended up being over 9 hours playing with various virtual machines.

Now I have managed to install WriteRoom 3.21 on it also now considering this is a Ryzen 7 5700U system. It runs Monterey about the speed of a Pentium. You can literally type and watch the delay as the buffer updates.

So 9 hours for the slowest VM in history. That’s with it set at 8GB Ram and using 4 processor cores. Ridiculous.

Also while I was playing with emulators. I have been playing with PCSX2 (Playstation 2) emulator and have been playing most of the Burnout franchise.

It works fine but when I tried using EPSXE (PlayStation 1) what a nightmare as half of the plug-ins just refused to work.

I did try Xemu(Xbox emulator) I did try running Project Gotham 3 Racing but it wouldn’t even get above 15 frames per second making the game unplayable.

Given this is a Ryzen 7 I was thinking what the hell does it need to get it working better. My suspicion is the Vega 8 graphics card is just not up to snuff. Once again potato graphics cards used in laptops.

I was going to try Xenia (XBOX 360 emu) but given how bad the Xbox emu was I thought against it.

So one day I will get a decent desktop and run a decent video card but I am sure that’s going to be a cold day in hell before that.

Any way that’s enough waffle for now until next time … Take care

[sagatherose]

Newfound interest: scientology 😭😭😭

It's absolutely fucking absurd

I have read some of their secret documents too, about the different "OT" (Operating thetan) levels. 😌 the ones that are usually hidden and revealed on their flagship "Apollo" (I think). Some of it isnt directly copied but remembered by members who saw the documents first-hand.

I am learning about engrams and e-readers and clears and pre-clears and Xenu/Xemu ofcourse. Apparently "body thetans" is not something you learn about in detail until you are on OT level 3!! Body thetans are ofcourse the brainwashed souls of billions of aliens murdered by hydrogen bombs around volcanoes. 😀😀😀 absolutely bizzarre religion. Basically the lived past trauma of these aliens can rub off on you and through auditing you can get rid of your past trauma as well as remove them from you, basically being an operating thetan means that you are a thetan unburdened by the other thetans (I think) and you are "operating" your body, but at this stage you could operate with or without a flesh vessel. Something about being a high-stage OT means you can manipulate space, time, energy and matter apparently and according to wikipedia they also believe you can create your own universes but I am yet to understand what they mean by that properly. I think its done through similar processess as auditing but it might be self-done and without the auditer, I'm unsure. Either way all of it is incredibly odd.

In the secret documents there are apparently text about telepathic communication with body thetans but I am yet to find or read that part.

it's a lot of info and a lot to understand 😭 Its too much to keep track of so if I misremember something I'm sorry. I am planning to read through all the important and/or interesting parts of all the technical bulletins of dianetics and scientology (as well as the 14th volume which is the secret one, not available in your average scientology church, but on the previously-mentioned sea-org boats. This project will probably take a while lol because its a whole lot of texts and the hubbard himself made hundreds if not thousanda of audio lectures too. I might keep updating this blog on further interesting info or just what I'm reading about, so if you find this intriguing do follow and if you have any recommendations for texts to read or videos to watch I'd be happy to hear about it!! L. Ron Hubbard released a fuckton of books and I won't read them all because I am a pretty slow reader and most of it is just pseudo-scientific nonsense about his alternate psychology.

Anyway thanks for me byeee :3

[borrelia]

[opening up xemu]

[skyboxeye]

Capturing the ambience of Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge

This cult Xbox title launches pilots into dogfights above a handful of locales, each with its own auditory footprint.

Running the game

At the time of writing, the two dominant Xbox emulators offer significantly different experiences. Cxbx-Reloaded is performant but exhibits some (minor) graphical issues. Much more significantly, it sometimes crashes which can prevent the completion of story missions.

If your system can handle it, you can use Xemu. Or, continue using Cxbx while skipping missions (see below) to avoid any problematic portions in the game.

Installing DLC and title update

Xbox Live is no longer operation for original Xboxes, but fans have archived this content, and made it easy to install. Before installing it, you'll want to apply some rendering-improvement modifications - see below.

Widescreen

Extract the game's content and apply this hex edit, courtesy of Esppiral and retroszur, to the game's XBE. Once again, please note it is for the XBE with DLC:

Find:

00 00 80 3F 8B CE E8 31 09 03 00 F3 0F 10 06 F3 0F 10 4E 0C F3 0F 11 44 24 40 F3 0F 10 46 04 F3 0F 11 44 24 44 F3 0F 10 46 08 F3 0F 11 4C 24 50

Replace:

00 00 40 3F 8B CE E8 31 09 03 00 F3 0F 10 06 F3 0F 10 4E 0C F3 0F 11 44 24 40 F3 0F 10 46 04 F3 0F 11 44 24 44 F3 0F 10 46 08 F3 0F 11 4C 24 50

Unlocked framerate

To unlock the framerate, find:

01 00 00 00 5B 83 C4 08 C3 D8 0D 58 36 29 00 89 46 10 89 4E 14 E8 D6 30 0C 00 5F 89 46 18 5E 33 C0 5B 83 C4 08 C3 CC CC 83 EC 08 56 8D 44 24 04

And replace:

00 00 00 00 5B 83 C4 08 C3 D8 0D 58 36 29 00 89 46 10 89 4E 14 E8 D6 30 0C 00 5F 89 46 18 5E 33 C0 5B 83 C4 08 C3 CC CC 83 EC 08 56 8D 44 24 04

You'll want to apply this timing fix along with it. Find:

00 00 7A 44 00 00 20 41 30 B7 01 00 C0 93 01 00 90 93 01 00 70 52 01 00 90 AD 01 00 00 2C 13 00 80 76 0E 00 80 52 01 00 60 28 0C 00 60 28 0C 00 90 52 01 00

And replace:

00 00 FA 43 00 00 20 41 30 B7 01 00 C0 93 01 00 90 93 01 00 70 52 01 00 90 AD 01 00 00 2C 13 00 80 76 0E 00 80 52 01 00 60 28 0C 00 60 28 0C 00 90 52 01 00

Capturing footage

To record footage from The Pandora, which serves as the Hunters' hangar, we can remove the HUD elements present at plane selection. The easiest way to achieve this is capture one of the HUD-less frames during the short transition between mission selection and fighter selection, and render it as an overlay on top of our recorded hangar footage.

I don't know of any Xbox emulators which support texture mods. If such an option existed, we could replace the textures which make up the HUD. We could also try to manipulate the extracted texture files, and run the modified game. But I didn't try either of these.

The HUD is briefly hidden when your plane is shown exiting the Pandora to enter a free-roam area. I tried getting this state to persist using Cheat Engine, but failed.

Extracting sounds

My favorite tool for extracting Xbox files is wx360 v1.6.

Crimson Skies has a ton of audio directories. We're most interested in Pandora_Internal, inside the UI folder, and the dedicated ZIP archives for each locale (AX, CH, LC, and SH). There are some other streams in the general archive as well.

To convert the Xbox audio files we can use vgmstream (I recommend the command line tool) or VLC. I found the results were slightly different - personally in these situations I tend to trust vgmstream.

After comparing in-game recordings to simple asset loops, I believe that the game somehow specifies loop start/end points for its ambient streams. I'm not sure where this information is stored however - perhaps the SDB files inside the data archive?

For mission areas, it seems like the game crossfades relevant ambient assets by about 5 seconds to create a continuous loop.

Skipping missions

You can use CrimsonData.txt files from completed saved games, or use cheats to speedrun the game. However, I couldn't get the former to work - presumably there is some kind of checksum system at work to prevent cheating or DLC piracy. There are tools to re-sign saved content but the one I tried doesn't support Crimson Skies.

Putting it all together

Render your properly looped assets on top of your footage and any overlay to eliminate HUD elements.

[posthumanwanderings]

brief ramble, but had a good two days off chiseling through Persona 1 for the first time ever (and first Persona game I’ve given a serious play on) which is a big deal for me because from the early days of this blog I’ve vaporwaved a lot of the series’ music to upload to here and youtube without knowing any of the context. so it’s cool to see the actual areas and cutscenes that these tracks play on and will upload more loops / NoPlays / a new mix accordingly. might continue streaming it this week cause I’m already looking forward to play Persona 2 so it’ll be nice if I can have P2 ready to start by next Halloween. also hung out with one of my besties I haven’t seen in forever playing all the random N64 games I had downloaded from my recent multistream. was really fun and reminder I should really seriously try to be a ‘human’ again chilling with my friends more instead of the retail industry being the only human interaction I have... 😵‍🔫 as far as next blog and stream themes go, that all depends if I can get XBOX OG emulation running alright... which last time I checked both XEMU and CXBX it’s not looking too hot... from what I read even if you have a super beefed up gaming PC it’s still janked so I know it’s not just my setup. I do have a capture device in these situations but it’s MIA ATM so I’ll just look around for it more, but if any of you have experience with XBOX OG emulation and can give me some pointers or even a forum to explain how to tweek settings better please hit me up! otherwise we’ll go straight into GameCube and Wii stuff for the majority of the month since Dolphin runs just perfect these days = )

[crashynews]

Shadowluigi: (Xemu/Read Description) Crash Nitro Kart (July 29th 2003 Prototype) LAN Multiplayer Test

(There’s no audio because of how this build likes to behaves with Xemu, especially video files. As such, all .sfd video files, and .wma audio files have been striped out. And all .csv files with instances of .wav files have been edited. I do plan to release this edited version when I’ve done a bit more testing with it.) The following is test gameplay of the LAN Multiplayer mode of Crash Nitro…

[boycraft18462]

Hello

Welcome to my tumblr I guess. Don't know what to say on here but I'll figure that out eventually.

Dont mind me just testing out this text editor Anyway, here's a video showcasing the og xbox dashboard on XEMU for no particular reason other than testing

[simantopia]

discovered i can set the ps2 emulator to HD in settings. whilst it doesn't look as pixelated anymore, it still doesn't look as good as the xbox / xemu. the details of his clothes are still not as clear. :') the lighting & smoothness still isn't as good as xbox either. even with both being HD, xbox definitely beats ps2's graphics.

buuuut like... it being less pixelated would probs still help with better quality icons. since i can't seem to get debug cheats working on xemu. =o=

regular PS2 emu settings for comparison

(why a lotta my early icons looked so baked! lol! i was using pixelated af screencaps!)

[lab-practicum]

hi i believe at some point you recommended me to draw things for jet set radio! i was curious but i didnt actually know where to start since theres multiple games [i think. i might be wrong idk its a blurry memory]

so where do you recommend i start from?

absolutely play jet set radio future first. jet set radio 1 is the one thats better remembered and it has a fantastic artstyle and soundtrack but it feels shit to play. jet set radio future is so much more fun and and the character designs are amazing. you can play it on xemu, (https://xemu.app/) an original xbox emulator, since there's not official pc port. jsrf is basically a retelling of the first game so you will not miss anything if you dont play jsr first